1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to image processing method and image processing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
An electronic document has pluralities of pages that include document images. If all the document images have been arranged in the upright orientation, then they are easy to see when a user browses the electronic document.
To satisfy such need, in a known image processing technique (Technique 1), image data is received by a facsimile transmitting-receiving unit, and stored in a memory, and an orientation identifying unit identifies the orientation of an image based on the image data, and transmits the image data with information on the identified orientation to a computer, and the computer arranges document images based on the image data in the upright orientation according to the information, and displays the document images. Therefore user's works are saved.
In another known technique (Technique 2), the orientation of a document image is detected as any of 0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees from a result of character recognition, and to identify the orientation accurately, if two or more orientations are estimated for a character in the document image, then the character is less taken into account to detect the orientation of the whole document image.